Sheet music of neglected keyboard pieces free online

One of the least known but most useful musical resources on the internet is a free archive of ready-to-use sheet music of neglected keyboard pieces for viewing, listening and downloading. The archive was curated in 2002 by Dr William Wynne Willson, mathematician, enthusiastic amateur pianist, and founding Webmaster and stalwart of the Lennox Berkeley Society. But after his death in 2010 some of his music files disappeared, and it is only now, thanks to the efforts of his daughter, the soprano Emma Dogliani, a loyal member of the Berkeley Society, and Thomas Daly, his successor as LBS Webmaster, that the archive has been restored at musicwww.co.uk.

It offers 137 pieces of sheet music, chosen and typeset, sometimes transcribed, by William himself, and there are plans to rescue more of the lost files and to add others. The existing archive comprises, in the main, outstanding works by lesser-known composers (e.g., the slow movements of sonatas by the English composer George Pinto) or unknown works by better-known composers (for example, a charming Cantabile by Chopin). There are also three pieces by William himself (two rags and an In Nomine), along with works by Alkan, Bach, Field, Fischer, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert and Hugo Wolf. There are also special collections of clock music, and duets with one easy part etc. The site is necessarily confined to compositions in the public domain, so the collection cannot include any Berkeley, or any other contemporary works still in copyright.

Emma Dogliani is determined that the site should remain freely available for everyone, as her father intended. To offset the costs of administration, and of typesetting new additions, she has launched a Crowdfunding appeal which can be found at justgiving.com.